Evolution and Probability

Dillan,This has been done at NAIG, and it didn't go anywhere. It has, of course, scrolled off that board now, but Thomas showed fairly conclusively that your and Spetner's theses were non-starters. I can ask Thomas if he archived any of his rebuttals.As for me, I don't think much of anything regarding Spetner's pap.Most don't.------------------
(2) "A second characteristic of the pseudo-scientist, which greatly strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia," which manifests itself in several ways:
...(3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against...(4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. ..

quote:

---

How much more would this number increase for other examples of convergence, like hemoglobin in earthworms and hemoglobin in humans?

---

I could not find any amino acid or nucleotide sequences for human and earthworm hemoglobin (no homologous sequences, that is - lots of hemoglobin d1 for earthworms, lots of b,c, a,g, etc. for human), so there were no means for comparison to see if convergence exists, though I suspect that the degree of conservation is closer in human and langur than either is to earthworm, where we would not be discussing convergenece anyway.So

quote:

---

SLPx:
"I could not find any amino acid or nucleotide sequences for human and earthworm hemoglobin (no homologous sequences, that is - lots of hemoglobin d1 for earthworms, lots of b,c, a,g, etc. for human), so there were no means for comparison to see if convergence exists, though I suspect that the degree of conservation is closer in human and langur than either is to earthworm, where we would not be discussing convergenece anyway."

​

Dillan:

​

I know that parts of hemoglobin converged, because hemoglobin cannot be explained by common descent.

---

That has to be the most illogical, fallacious tautology I have ever seen put forth, even by creationists!HOW exactly, do you KNOW this, when there is no way for you to?Have YOU performed, in secret, earthworm hemoglobin amino acid and DNA sequencing and comparative analysis and come to your 'conclusion'?If you have not, then please provide your sources for this information, ofr it is not in any public database that I could find.But there is a funny thing here - you see, Dillan, my graduate advisor wasa pioneer of sorts in the use of amino acid (and later DNA sequence) data to analyse evolutionary hypotheses of descent. His lab, in fact, performed one of the bigger such analyses. On cytochrome c and later on hemoglobin.I have the papers in question (though not handy - at the office), and, in fact, there is a nice, hypothesis-friendly succession of change in both amino acid and DNA sequences.No convertgence is indicated at all.So pleae, the papers/data you must have are not readily available, please cite them for us.Thanks.[This message has been edited by SLPx, 08-30-2003]

quote:

---

Dillan:

​

This is an irrelevant analogy. Spetner shows that unless a number of mutations occur, then speciation is virtually impossible

---

This is interesting.ReMine, another non-geneticist creationist, has claimed that some huge number of mutations would be required to produce a human from a non-human, for example.And he had not one single piee of evidence at all for that assertion.I know - I have asked him repeatedly.And now it seems Spetner is saying essentially the same thing (on a different level).Tell us, Dillan, how was it that Spetner has discovered just how many mutations are required for speciation to occur?Because you know, I'd bet LOTS of us biologists would love to read all about it.

quote:

---

FK:
The funny thing is, though, if you follow Spetner's calculation, he does mathematically "disprove" the possibility of speciation. Since speciation has been observed, that pretty much nullifies Spetner's approach, which was a multi-level straw man anyway

---

Does that mena he disproved post-Flood hyperspeciation, too?Oh no wait - that was the whole point of his self-published book -to toss out a fairy tale based on disrpoven 'conclusions' to rescue the cultish nonsense that is YECism.

dillan posted, in 'support' of his claims about hemoglobin convergence:

quote:

---

supposed to have converged in several species, such as earthworms, mollusks, echinoderms, etc.. Dickerson says, "It is hard to see a common line of descent snaking in so unststematic a way through so many different phyla..."
Richard Dawkins seems to agree. In an internet article Dawkins said, "The dozen or so different globins inside you are descended from an ancient globin gene which, in a remote ancestor who lived about half a billion years ago, duplicated, after which both copies stayed in the genome.

​

‘There were then two copies of it, in different parts of the genome of all descendant animals. One copy was destined to give rise to the alpha cluster (on what would eventually become Chromosome 11 in our genome), the other to the beta cluster (on Chromosome 16)...

​

‘We should see the same within-genome split if we look at any other mammals, at birds, reptiles, amphibians and bony fish, for our common ancestor with all of them lived less than 500 million years ago. Wherever it has been investigated, this expectation has proved correct."

---

Apparently, dillan does not actually know what convergence is.Am I right?

PK:

quote:

---

As for your comment on transpositions I need only note that you have chnaged the subject. *IF* they were adaptively directed even point mutations would be a problem for the current theory of evolution. But "if"s are not evidence.

---

In the world of the creationist, "ifs" are most certainly evidence. As are repeated assertions.Of course, the "directedness" of non-random mutation has been done to death, and for creationists to keep using it as a crutch is just plain sad.Directed mutations are not directed. Never were. What appeared to be directed mutations were in fact artifacts of genome wide hypermutation as a response to oxidative stress, and the original studies only looked at the genes that they expected to change. I alone have posted dozens of citations on this issue on this board more than once, and others have as well.I simply cannot understand how creationists keep trying to pull that one out of their collective butts as if it actually rescues thier laughable cause.Actually, having just read "Lies and the lying liars theat tell them" by Al Franken (a hilarious and thoroughly instructive book, by the way), I think I actually do understand why they do it...